For the love of Salsa!

Me & Cheyenne (drinking bubbly apple juice)

Cheyenne and I share a lot of things.  For instance, neither one of us can hide our feelings very well, what we think is telegraphed on our faces, we love taking care of our animals, we are strong willed, and we love babies.  Also, we share a love of really good Salsa.  Mexican food makes us happy and we like a little heat.  She is her mother's daughter, with just enough of her daddy mixed in to mellow her out in a nice way.

She has been making some noise about needing to make salsa with our bountiful harvest of tomatoes.  Apparently, Cheyenne has not thought that using the tomatoes to make tomato sauce was a very wise use of those beautiful ‘maters.  A love of spaghetti is not something we share.  So, I surfed the internet for a recipe and found one that was simple and looked promising. And yesterday we got busy over some tomatoes, hot peppers, and cilantro.

The recipe was simple and we followed it up until we tasted the salsa, then we went to tinkering.  Cheyenne is really good about making notes as she improvises so we were able to recreate the same flavor this morning, as we already needed more.

Below is the recipe- our rendition, not the one from the internet.  Before putting everything in the food processor, we cored the tomatoes and scored the other ends and dropped them into boiling water for about a minute.  The tomatoes are in the boiling water just long enough for the skin to start to curl.  Then the peeling just slips off, chop the tomatoes roughly and toss in the processor.  The longer you run the food processor the finer the salsa, so if you like chunky then just pulse a few times.  Also, for thicker salsa use paste tomatoes such as roma or Illini Gold.

Cheyenne’s Fresh Salsa

2-3 medium tomatoes, stems and peelings removed (see above)

½  onion coarsely chopped

2- fish peppers seeds removed- unless you want to up the heat then leave the seeds in. (if you don’t have fish peppers, jalapeno or any other hot pepper will work.

Juice of one lime

1 cup cilantro

1 tsp salt (adjust to taste)

½ tsp of cumin

Put tomatoes, peppers & onions in food processor and pulse for about 2 minutes.  Add the rest of the ingredients and pulse till you are happy with the consistency.  Taste- if too hot add more tomatoes, if not hot enough, add more peppers.

Let set in the refrigerator for one hour to let the flavors blend- if you can wait that long, we just eat right out of the blender bowl. 

ENJOY!

Cherokee Purple- One Good Tomato

Tomatoes and other goodies from the garden

As I have said in a previous blog, this has been my first year to have really good success with growing tomatoes in  my garden.  Well, while I do enjoy all the tomatoes, there is one that really stands out as DELICIOUS!  That is the Cherokee Purple, an heirloom tomato that is said to have origins with the Cherokee Indians from Tennessee grown pre-1890.

A few summers back I got one really great tomato from a plant called "Black Krim".  It was the best tomato I had eaten up to that point.  I wanted to grow those again but the seed catalog I was ordering from did not offer those, so I went with another purple tomato, the Cherokee.  I am so glad that I did, these have been our favorite.  And of course, being an heirloom we can save the seeds and the exact same wonderful tomato next season.

As spring went along and blossoms turned into baby fruit, I was really getting excited.  The green tomatoes just kept getting bigger- many of them getting to the size of softballs.  It was hard to wait, it seemed that all the varieties took forever to ripen!  I am sure that the length of time seemed longer than it really was, I checked them daily and you know what they say about a watched pot...

I guess due to the pitiful results of the previous season, I did not understand what kind of rambling these vines were going to do.  My staking was terribly inadequate.  The weight of the fruit caused the vines to dip down and touch the ground.  The only problem- other than being a bit difficult to get to the fruit- is that any tomatoes resting on the ground were a target for pill bugs or rolly pollies as we have always called them.  I was shocked at the amount of tomato that these little bugs can consume.

The Cherokee Puple

The first really large one that came in, was such a prize.  I sliced and all my waiting was rewarded.  Cheyenne, who is a tomato kinda gal- but only fresh ones from the garden, came in and had a slice.  Her eyes lit up and she said, "Now that is good!"  Last week, I went out to visit my grandmother and noticed quite a few tomatoes finishing up on her window sill.  I asked her if she had any Cherokee Purples and before I could finish the name she interrupted me exclaiming, "Oh My, that was such a good tomato.  Those are my favorite."  That says a lot, grandmother is in her 80's and gardening has always been a part of her life, so she should know what she is talking about.

I am really happy to have grown these tomatoes as seedlings for our nursery.  I am confident that anyone who bought seedlings from us was very pleased.  These will definitely be in our inventory next spring and in our gardens.  Give the Cherokee Purple a try, you will be glad you did.

Good Blue Fun

Blueberries have been getting lots of attention these days as being a superfood.  Apparently they are just bursting with lots of good things for our bodies.  These are one of my personal favorites.  I love the way the little round fruits pop between your teeth releasing all that juice onto your taste buds.  Now that’s good stuff.

Last week Tony & I went to the Berry Bush Blue Berry Farm in Ben Wheeler.  Not only are blueberries good to eat, but they are a lot of fun to pick.  Blueberry bushes mature into very tall shrubs which means that the shrub itself casts some pretty good shade making the job not so hard in the hot summer.  In this area blueberries ripen during June and July.  

At the Berry Bush, the berries are $18.00 per gallon if you buy then already picked or $12.00 per gallon you pick.  I like picking the fruit and it is a great experience for kids to see where the food they eat comes from.  When you walk into the shed by the parking lot, there are stacks of gallon size baskets so it is easy to know how much you have picked.  Tony & I each got a basket.  Of course, being who I am I started competing with him to see who could pick the most the fastest.  Tony was unaware of the contest (it’s easier to win that way) and walked over and dumped his basket into mine.  Oh well.   A few summers back we stopped at a u pick pea patch and I thoroughly thumped him and 2 kids.  Three against one and they still lost.  I attribute this pea picking skill to the summer I picked peas for my Uncle Pat who farmed around the corner from our house.  I was 12 and to this day, I still consider that the hardest work I ever did, but I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.  Blueberry picking is much easier than pea picking.

Once you have picked what you want and eaten a few (or more), you take your berries back to the shed and the sweet little lady puts them in a paper sack and you pay her the money.  Talk about easy and fun.  By the way, should you feel guilty about eating some berries, the sweet lady told us to be sure to taste the berries from the bush we were picking from to make certain they were good and sweet.  So, its ok to eat along the way making the experience all the more sweet.

Not only does Ben Wheeler have a great blueberry farm, they have a great hamburger joing.  It is located in the Exxon.  Don’t let that fool you, Sam’s makes one of the best burgers I have eaten, cooked when you order it and made from a hand patted patty.  The veggies are fresh and crisp.  You can eat you burger at the soda fountain while sitting on old fashioned bar stools- another great bit of fun for the kids.  The burger is big enough to share and is priced less than the fast food burgers that aren’t good for you. 

So check out The Berry Bush- http://www.berrybushusa.com/,  and Sam’s Exxon in Ben Wheeler- you will be glad you did.  These pictures are from their website.

Heirloom Tomatoes

Lovely Tomatoes, my best harvest ever!!!

For several years I have been trying to grow tomatoes.  It would seem that this would be easy in the south.  After all, according to Shirley McLain in "Steel Magnolias" growing tomatoes is what southern women do.  For me, however, this has not been the case.

The first year I planted tomatoes I planted Brandy-wine.  These are heralded as the best tasting tomato ever.  And they may be, but once the temps get into the 90's they don't set fruit very well ( you will find this in the small print in a good seed catalog).  Well, in Texas we can be in the 90's before April says good-bye.  So, that summer the temps went high quickly and I got no tomatoes, large beautiful vines, but no tomatoes.  To this day, I can not tell you if Brandy-wine lives up to its billing or not.

The next summer, I don't even remember what I planted, but all I got was a few little fruits.  This was quite frustrating to me since it was a desire of mine to can my own tomato sauce from tomatoes grown in my own garden.  At the rate I was going, I would be doing good to make a salad much less can many quarts of sauce.  However, I did get one Black Krim Tomato and it was the best I ever tasted.  It will be in my garden this next year.

But, hope springs eternal in a gardeners heart and the next summer I went at it hard.  I scoured the catalogs looking for varieties that would be good in high heat, mild drought conditions and so forth.  Then I planted like crazy.  Well the season I am talking about was last summer.  Hell turned on its blow dryers and a hideous western wind blew for months, no rain fell for months and the temperatures hit one hundred before May had come and gone and did not come down until the end of August.  So, the little tomato plants just didn't stand a chance.  I did get a few tomatoes from volunteers that had come from tomatoes that we had fed to the pigs the summer before.  Think about it for a minute and you will figure it out.  I must say I felt a bit insulted at the fact that the garden snubbed all my hard work and research in favor of pig poo, but oh well at least I got a few tomatoes.

June Pink sliced up and ready for breakfast.

Now, each season may have looked like a failure in regards to my tomato aspirations, but each season I learned something to apply to the next try.  After all, I could not give up.  Because of the land on which I garden, I have to be shrewd.  My property is a very steep hill that slopes towards the North.  I have essentially a walled garden because of the 80' trees surrounding my 2 acres.  What this means is, not all my property gets enough sun to grow heat loving veggies like eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers.  Of these, the most choosy is the tomatoes. Not only is sun exposure a problem, but the soil temperature is tricky.  The soil takes its time warming to the temps that tomatoes need to thrive do to the micro-climate I have on my place.

The soil temps is what was really getting me into trouble.  I was so excited and ready to get gardening, that I would plant seedlings as soon as possible.  However, by the time the soil temps warmed up sufficiently the seedlings would be getting stressed and then be a target for bugs.  So, I learned from the volunteers that my garden needed tomatoes planted in mid-April, this is when they came up on their own.  Left alone, plants do know when they need to come up and greet the new season.

Rambling Tomato Vines

Well, this year I choose the hottest spot on my acreage to till the tomato patch.  Due to the business of the nursery, it was easy to wait until mid-April to plant.  I mulched the seedlings immediately- I believe this is a key to successful gardening, MULCH, MULCH, MULCH!  Well, the tomatoes took their sweet time getting ripe, but I had green tomatoes on the vines very quickly.  I have been harvesting everyday now for about 2 weeks.  I am so happy.  I did not plant enough to have me canning many quarts of sauce, but I have canned 3 quarts and made many tasty dishes.

I chose 4 varieties this year.  June Pink- an early tomato, Cherokee Purple, Arkansas Traveler, and Illini Gold.  I have been very pleased with each of them.  Being Heirloom varieties, I could save seeds to grow next year and the plants are indeterminate.  This means the plants ramble much like a cucumber or pea vine, but they do not climb on their own.  Now, good supports will keep these beauties off the ground but I obviously need to work on the support things in my garden.  I have tomato plants rambling all over, but I am so happy!  The pig is happy too, I toss any tomatoes that have gone bad or been eaten too badly by bugs over the fence to her- who knows what gifts she will leave me for next year....

Homemade Tomato Sauce & Some Ripe Illini Gold & Cherokee Purple

Sierra +Birthday= Chicken Jalapeno Soup

That is a lot of candles! She blew them all out in one try, make your wish

Today, my third daughter, Sierra Anne, turns 13.  My how time does fly.  Sierra is very petite, but don't let her size fool you.  She is a firecracker.  But, she is every bit as sweet as she is feisty.

When it is your birthday on the farm, you don't have to do your chores.  The other siblings chip in and get them done.  All of the kids like this perk.  I also cook the birthday person's favorite meal for dinner.  So, tonight we will be having chicken jalapeno soup.  What is funny about this recipe, it that I leave out the Jalapenos!  Cheyenne and I like it hot, but we are about the only ones, if only 2 out of 6 like it I will tone it down.  No matter, this soup is still awesome!  Sierra also has a thing for jello.  She will choose the Chinese food place in town just for the jello, the food there is not that great.  So, I told her that I would get her some jello- one flavor for every day of the week.

The birthday banner goes up and stays up for about a week.  Why not?  I am so glad that God sent these wonderful people to be my children, so why not let the celebrating linger on?  Birthdays are fun and we enjoy them. Regardless if people admit it or not, everyone likes to have a fuss made on their birthday.  It feels good to know that there is someone who is delighted that on that certain day in history, you entered this world.

Here is the recipe for the birthday girl's favorite food:

Chicken Jalapeno Soup
1 whole chicken
1 tbsp of olive oil
1/4 cup chopped onion
garlic clove

To the broth add:
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
2 cups cream (half/half will work great, plain milk is ok, but not nearly as creamy)
2- 4 oz cans of green chillies
1 jalapeno seeded and chopped
1/2 cumin
1 lb velveeta cubed.

Boil chicken until tender, remove from broth (save broth- you should have about 8 cups add water if you don't), pull chicken from bone and tear into small pieces

In skillet heat oil and cook onions until clear, add garlic and cook for about 1 minute.  Add onions to broth, then add the ingredients listed above except the velveeta.  Cook for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add velveeta and cook over low heat until melted.  Stir in chicken and cook on low until warmed through.  Serve, this tastes great with cornbread.

Sisters, Savannah and Cheyenne teamed up for this cake